US Intel Agencies To Build Superconducting Computer 73
dcblogs writes "The Director of National Intelligence is soliciting help to develop a superconducting computer. The goal of the government's solicitation is 'to demonstrate a small-scale computer based on superconducting logic and cryogenic memory that is energy efficient, scalable, and able to solve interesting problems.' The NSA, in particular, has had a long interest in superconducting technology, but 'significant technical obstacles prevented exploration of superconducting computing,' the government said in its solicitation. Those innovations include cryogenic memory designs that allow operation of memory and logic in close proximity within the cold environment, as well as much faster switching speeds. U.S. intelligence agencies don't disclose the size of their systems, but the NSA is building a data center in Utah with a 65 MW power supply."
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The SlashJerk ones will go willingly, mindless liberals.
It's hilarious how you "conservative" idiots always accuse others
of being stupid, when "conservatives" such as you cannot even write
grammatically correct English.
I hate to break the news to you, but uneducated idiots like you are
and WILL REMAIN at the bottom of the food chain. You are used
like the pawns you are by the US government, which sends bunches of your
dumb asses off to be blown up by people who don't like you invading
their country.
Go back to your trailer park and drink Budweiser, you fucking loser.
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your != you're
non-sense != nonsense
cant != can't
vial != vile
Regards,
your third grade teacher.
MW (Score:2)
I take it the phrase "relays clacked" is no longer useful in science fiction stories?
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Ahh, relays!
I just can't warm up to these superconducting thingamajigs.
Red Riding Hood Beware (Score:5, Informative)
"Why Big Brother, what big eyes you have!"
"All the better to see you with, my dear."
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Uh. That's "annuit coeptis", actually, which means "He approves of our undertaking".
US Intel Agencies Should Forfeit Their Toys (Score:4, Insightful)
They violated the bill of rights with their toys. They should be taken away, and the children who did it punished.
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The founding fathers never intended the bill of rights to apply to the internet.
Re:US Intel Agencies Should Forfeit Their Toys (Score:5, Insightful)
The founding fathers intended that the freedoms assigned by the Bill of Rights not be superseded by technology, bureaucracy, plutarchy, or dictatorship.
Re:US Intel Agencies Should Forfeit Their Toys (Score:4, Informative)
The founding fathers never intended the bill of rights to apply to the internet.
Actually, the founding fathers never intended the bill of rights PERIOD.
So many ordinary citizens saw the dangers of authoritarian government that some colonies refused to ratify the Constitution until the Bill of Rights was added.
The first Bill of Rights was proposed during the convention but was defeated by a unanimous vote of the state delegations after only a brief discussion. Madison, then an opponent of a Bill of Rights, later explained the vote by calling the state bills of rights "parchment barriers" that offered only an illusion of protection against tyranny. (More prophetic words were seldom spoken.) Madison only later became in favor of the BOR.
It wasn't till 11 states had ratified the Constitution and the first congress met that the Bill of Rights was actually added, after a bitter and protracted debate. The first 12 amendments were submitted to the states for ratification in 1789 (only 10 passed). Only after this did the holdout colonies decide to become part of the United States.
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Actually, the founding fathers never intended the bill of rights PERIOD.
I hate to say this, but they were wrong.
I'm completely in agreement with Hamilton's argument against appearing to enumerate rights, but those amendments are the final defenses our rights have left. The idea of people's rights being inalienable and the powers of the government coming from the people through the Constitution is long dead. The feeble pretenses of not specifically violating the Bill of Rights is all that keeps the few rights we have left intact. Without the Bill of Rights, our government would
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I hate to say this, but they were wrong.
Damn straight.
Further, had the seen what is going on now they would have put some TEETH in the protections,
with real penalties, instead of leaving that totally up to the discretion of some guy wearing a robe.
Link? (Score:3)
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Congrats! You are one of the few, the proud, the readers of the FA.
Here's an article [computerworld.com]
and the government program [fbo.gov]
Modded up and down (Score:2)
link? (Score:2)
what a joke (Score:5, Insightful)
it's amazing that we cant seem to fund a universal healthcare system that would help sick people but we magically have all the money in the world to spy on said sick people.
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Providing for the common defense is constitutional. Health Insurance is not.
We should be worrying about getting our government to do the things it is supposed to do correctly instead of pretending that since we're paying for A we're entitled to B, too.
Re:what a joke (Score:4, Insightful)
We need ppl to be well so that they can fight, work, etc. WWI was stopped early due to the massive disease issues (esp. flu) and the inability of the nations to have sustained war. However, other wars have been started over resources and perceptions of being able to take on some other nation.
Doing a minimal national health care such as O'care is not all that horrible, esp. since it actually is CHEAPER to us than what we had.
Incidentally, that is also why top generals in the military back taking actions on AGW. They would rather not have to go to war in the future. Yet, it is so odd that so many neo-con types want to allow AGW to continue and do not care about future wars. I guess that is because so many of them have never been to war.
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We need ppl to be well so that they can fight, work, etc.
That's a bullshit justification that would work for any government action regardless of how intrusive it is. We need people to have kids, so now the government gets to regulate having children? We need people to have jobs, so the government can take over any industry?
I'm not saying Obamacare is even close to that scale, but that the heart of your argument is completely fallacious.
Incidentally, that is also why top generals in the military back taking actions on AGW.
How about this? Top generals should stfu about stuff they know nothing about. At the least, you shouldn't take a general's word f
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Who said that they are not one and the same?
I say that they are not one and the same. I say no.
No means no. If your force it on me, thats called rape. Get it through your heads that you are raping Americans that don't want to take part in your unconstitutional experiment in forced commerce. No means no. Its called rape. Fuck off.
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Providing for the common defense is constitutional. Health Insurance is not.
We should be worrying about getting our government to do the things it is supposed to do correctly instead of pretending that since we're paying for A we're entitled to B, too.
Providing for the common defense? You must be delusional.
The question today is one of defending ourselves FROM the government.
The biggest threat to the people and the freedoms of the United States is not some imaginary external enemy. Its our own government,
which, as has become patently obvious, we are powerless to control.
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Providing for the common defense is constitutional.
But is the US following an efficient strategy in order to provide its own defense? It spends more than any nation in the world on it.
Re:what a joke (Score:4, Insightful)
It's us vs them in the minds of many voters. "You don't look like me, so you must be bad in some way. You're out to bomb me or you want a check from the government to spend on drugs. Either way, I want my tax dollars to protect me from you, not help you."
To me, that's the most depressing thing about American politics, and the only way I can think it will change is to wait until most of the current citizens die out and hope subsequent generations are smarter than that.
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That's right, lets play the race card again.
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Can superconductors compute? (Score:3, Interesting)
There must be a divide by 0 in there somewhere, it just doesn't seem like the universe would permit computation without creating some entropy.
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You don't need infinite resistance insulators if there is a path with 0 resistance (as long as its not saturated). Also, there are way better insulators than vacuum.
However there always will be some losses: if you want to represent a bit, it must require some switching energy, or it will thermally get switched. This is where the massive gain from being very cold comes from: you can have way lower energy bit representations.
There is also always some capacitance, and connecting a low bit to a high bit is much
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Don't transistors work better with DC?
Re:Can superconductors compute? (Score:4, Informative)
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/design/superconductor-logic-goes-lowpower [ieee.org]
It appears that "logic" is done through wave form cancellation.
You have a waveform, if you pass through the same point an inverse waveform you cancel out the waveforms and end up with a 0, or a matches wave form will amplify the signal giving you a 1. Though, no, I don't fully understand how this is used for computation, it doesn't appear that they know either.
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They're probably using Rapid Single Flux Quantum [wikipedia.org] (RSFQ), which isn't really a "quantum" computer logic, but is very fast and very low power.
It's the latter property that is of interest for making supercomputers. One of the biggest performance limitations is latency, which is caused by the speed of light delay between processors. Moving processors closer reduces the delay, but increases the specific power until there is just no practical way to cool the computer and it overheats.
Superconducting logics like R
Er, wait, what? (Score:2)
'significant technical obstacles prevented exploration of superconducting computing,
Those "significant technical obstacles" haven't prevented people from creating super-cooled computers in their mom's garages. I have to wonder how the NSA missed that one. Especially since two minutes with Google will show you plenty and it's my understanding they've already built several "super computers" to download, store, and analyze the whole internet, all of our phone calls, and blah blah, yeah.
More likely, the obstacles were solved years ago, and now that everyone else has too, they don't have to kee
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I think the key phrase there is "superconducting computing", not "super-cooled". If your mom's garage has a custom semiconductor fab working on a non silicon process, you won't have space for the car.
No. It just had some old pentium chips from the days when overclocking was possible because all chips were unlocked... and a big dewer of liquid nitrogen. Of course, you couldn't just pour it on the computer... you had to cool it using isopropyl alcohol and dry ice first... cool it in stages to prevent thermal fracturing. But once you got the whole unit submerged and powered it on, it was effectively supercooled... just like they were doing in the 80s with Cray supercomputers.
You don't need a fab lab to su
Old, old, old (Score:2)
The best I can find, since there IS NO TFA TO READ, is an IARPA solicitation from 2010/2011.
http://www.iarpa.gov/Programs/sso/solicitation_safe1007.html [iarpa.gov]
Slashdot editing has not only gone downhill, it has hit bottom and started to dig.
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Anyway, it has always been worth what you pay for it.
Such as (Score:2)
'...such as rooting out the final vestigages of freedom and privacy.'
I'll just assume that (Score:3)
... anything with "NSA" in its name that comes from the US government consists of half-truths, lies and deliberate disinformation.
Cryotron (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryotron [wikipedia.org]
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But like a fault-current limiter, but with a separate control conductor to generate the field. Couldn't switch a high load with it though, for obvious reasons.
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Set the old time machine to the 1950s!
Sure, if you'll pay the electric bill for the 1.21GW (or just tell me what corner drug store I can buy plutonium from).
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>> the NSA is building a data center in Utah with a 65 MW power supply.
Why don't you just go ahead and tell everyone the LAT/LON coordinates too while you're at it...
40.43153 N, 111.933092 W (WGS84)
Rapid single flux quantum computer? (Score:2)
TFA doesn't seem to mention it by name, but it sounds like this is an attempt to build a computer based on rapid single flux quantum principles.
Basically, you replace transistors with things called "Josephson junctions", and use short (picosecond-range) bursts of electricity instead of continuous DC current. Josephson junctions are a quantum phenomenon that happens in superconductors, hence the Q in RSFQ, but the computation itself is traditional logic, not quantum weirdness. That's why it needs to be cryog
Reminds me of (Score:2)
the Minds of Iain M. Banks which partly run in hyperspace to get around this pesky speed of light limit when processing things.
OK, that's all.
Super Conducting? (Score:1)